


Not the Top Shelf Stuff

by if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Kissing, Mention of abuse, One Shot, Other, lip biting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8613973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble/pseuds/if_i_go_there_will_be_trouble
Summary: Rupert Giles (Ripper at the time) and Ethan enter a bar in 1974 London, and find a woman who might help them summon a demon.  She's not interested in demons or Ethan.





	

Rupert Giles was supposed to be a good boy, a good watcher, a good student.  But, at age 21, he dropped out of Oxford and met Ethan Rayne, who wanted to ruin the world, watch it burn.  Now Giles could definitely be a watcher for that.  Rupert started calling himself ‘Ripper’, like Jack the Ripper.  Ethan loved it.  They couldn’t wait to start find the matches and some good kindling.

 

1974- London, England

 

Ripper entered the bar, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his white tee, one of the little rolls of paper tobacco behind the ear he pierced himself.  He waited at the  bar for a moment, looking around for Ethan before he got tired of playing polite and hit the wood with a fist.

A woman, the bartender, looked around at him, turning from a conversation with a tall man in a leather jacket.  She pulled the filter of the cigarette from her lips, and smiled like the whole world was about to be given to her on a porcelain plate.  “Sorry, my love, didn’t see you there.  Thanks for knockin’, though.”

Ripper couldn’t help but give her a few glances up and down, her ripped up black shirt, tattoos on her forearms, latin he couldn’t translate fast enough.  Her eyes were like fire, not like sunshine or bright or anything, but like the matches and kindling he was looking for.  “You work here often?”

“You obviously don’t come here often enough to know,” the woman said.  “You look like you need something with a high proof, but I don’t think you’d appreciate somethin’ from high on my shelf,” she was teasing him.  

Ripper shook his head, about to retort some sharp statement, but then Ethan suddenly appeared at his side, grinning that lopsided thing that made most girls get a good down-low tickle.  

But the woman’s smile just evaporated, “Ethan Rayne.  I told you if you came ‘round my bar again I would-”

“Flay my like Saint Bartholomew.  It was a really great image, had me blushing like a schoolgirl’s first time getting fingered,” Ethan chuckled.

The woman’s hard look stayed, and she turned to Ripper, “You with him?”

Ripper rolled his eyes, sighed audibly and nodded, and suddenly the woman’s smile returned.  She turned her back on the two, and poured two glasses with some bourbon and put some ice in both.  She handed Ripper one, and then Ethan reached for the other and she put it to her lips, downing the whole glass.  The woman snapped her fingers twice and suddenly there was a man by her, with runes all over his face and high hair, trying to hide some horns probably.  “I’ve got some company, Karv, do me a favor and watch the bar.”  

Karv nodded and the woman walked around the side of the bar, moving a finger in the air to get Ethan and Ripper to follow her into a back room.  Ethan winked at Ripper and lengthened his pace to catch up to her.  Ripper down his glass and stomped after the two.  

The woman held open one door, and the room behind it was darkly lit.  There were some worn couches, one of which she dominated until Ripper closed the door behind him, and she patted the place next to her.

“Now, my lovely flanneled girl, can we talk?” Ethan asked.

“Call me my name, and nothing but,” the woman said.

“Lilith,” Ethan started.

“Lilith?” Ripper asked, raising an eyebrow.  It seemed rather upper-crust and gilded for a woman who threatened flaying.

“Lilith, the original wife of Adam, the first woman, who refused to bow to man and was forced from the Garden of Eden,” the woman stated.

Ripper’s eyes widened, staring at her, “What do you mean?” 

The woman shrugged, “Once there was a cute girl who liked to braid hair, but she got in fights with her brothers too often.  It was more that they fought and she would get in the way, or she would end up being the punching bag for some good practice.”  She gestured to Ripper, and he didn’t understand, so she unrolled his sleeve and took the pack of cigarettes from him and lit one.  

Ripper wanted to touch her, hug her, apologize for the world and what it was.  

“So she got very close to death one night, the brain can only take so much bruising.  And she started praying.  But no one answered.  So she started cursing.  And a very old spirit, forced from paradise, felt real bad for her.  And they made a deal: life and power, if the spirit got a nice body to stay in.  But things got complicated.  Lilith and the little girl grew into one and another, twisting around and around each other until there was no separation between the two of them.  The little girl forgot her name, and took Lilith’s.  And Lilith forgot the words to dark spells and tattooed the ones she wanted to remember on the little girl.  Quid pro quo.”  The woman said, taking a long drag of the cigarette.

Ripper leaned an arm over her side of the couch, softly putting it around her.  Lilith shot him a little smile, like if a kiss was a facial expression. 

“Enough exposition, darling.  I got a favor to ask you,” Ethan said, scowling at the two’s contact.  Ethan did remember that little girl back when she had a different name.  He remembered kissing her harshly, and he remembered the first time she had bruises and he kissed every one and called her brave.  He did that for her for a long time, and she would smile.  And then one day she got angry, saying he was calling her by the wrong name, and that he shouldn’t kiss her bruises and call her brave, he should ignore them or ‘fucking her help’.

“And what’s that?” She snapped.

“We want to summon our own little demon,” Ethan said.

Lilith glared at Ethan, “I’m no demon, no part of me is.  Not a single bit.  I’m just an angry ghost and a scared woman, wrapped up too tight.  Got it?”

Ethan shrugged.

“Fucking got it?” She asked again.

“Fucking got it,” Ethan echoed, and stormed out.

Ripper stared at her for a while, not retracting his arm.  “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” She probed, hollowly, sucking on the cigarette.

Ripper sighed, reaching to light his own cigarette, “For Ethan.  For your brother.  For the fact I didn’t know you before.”

“What would you have done?” She murmured.

“Something.” Ripper mumbled.

Lilith stubbed out her cigarette, taking Ripper’s and stubbing it out too, on the heel of her boot.  She leaned over and kissed him hard, so hard, nibbling and sucking in his bottom lip, making him gasp, straddling his lap and pulling his hair.

“Well, fuck,” Ripper whispered.

“Yes, let’s.” Lilith moaned.


End file.
